


champagne problems

by clovekentwell



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan, The Trials of Apollo - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Based on a Taylor Swift Song, Basically Percabeth Breakup to Champagne Problems by Taylor Swift, Break Up, Drinking, F/M, Inspired by Taylor Swift, No Beta We Die Like Percabeth's Childhood, Post-Break Up, not very graphic though, rated for drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-14 20:06:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29301612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clovekentwell/pseuds/clovekentwell
Summary: Percy’s heart was glass. Annabeth dropped it.What else could she possibly say?
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson
Comments: 1
Kudos: 36
Collections: percabeth evermore set





	champagne problems

_You booked the night train for a reason_

_So you could sit there in this hurt_

_Bustling sounds or quiet sleepers_

_You’re not sure which is worse_

Percy steps onto the train platform, waiting. Annabeth said she’d walk him to the station, despite the late-night train he booked. 

She makes true to her promise. 

But the platform is nearly quiet, and he doesn’t know which is worse— silence, or if he’d rather have decibels of a bustling city in between them. And he just can’t look her in the eye.

So the two of them stand quietly, all four hands in all four pockets. 

He tries to look deeper, within himself, and find the path that led them both here. 

He knows it’s not clear or straightforward. Nothing is. But Percy would scour the world like a treasure map just to find that X that marks the spot where they fell apart.

It’s best to say that the nightmares started the downfall.

They risked being on probation for sneaking off dorms, just to try and get into one another’s arms again. To run solitary fingers over the beads that hung around her neck started to feel more like an irreversible cross, rather than a sign that there was still a home out there. Because what good is a home if you can’t go back?

So they would run to each other's arms, no matter the cost. There, they were no longer alone. There, they were home. There, they could remember.

But what about a place that would be open until the world stopped turning, where champagne laid in wait, where you could dance, drink, get lost, and try your best to forget?

Forgetting. The thing that tore Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase apart, and the only thing that helped them find their way back to one another. Like they always knew they would. Until it was too much to forget. Until the power of even the Lethe was useless against them. They were defiant saviors. Some things do not fade.

Forgetting.

It’s best to say that the nightmares started the downfall. It would be worse to say that _forgetting_ ended it.

_You told your family for a reason_

_You couldn't keep it in_

_Your sister splashed out on the bottle_

_Now no one's celebrating_

Percy’s warm breath blows puffs of air that last for a moment as clouds and then turn to nothing. There’s a scary difference when one goes from asking someone to stay when you have a nightmare, to asking them to _just go away._

And then there’s the difference of when there’s no one there you can tell either.

It didn’t start all at once. It never does. Heartache sneaks in gradually like a thief through your back door and tells you it's going for your golden assets while it distracts you and takes your childhood blanket. Maybe even pulls out a shotgun and hits you in the chest twice with it before slamming you in the face with the barrel.

You didn’t realize you had something you’d miss so much until it’s ripped out from under you. And it _hurts,_ in unromantic, cruel, messy ways.

Annabeth was a calculated girl. Smart and cynical. Brave and quick. 

She wouldn’t go out on school nights. Not to begin with, anyways. When she could bury herself in work, there wasn’t much need for anything else to keep her mind on success. 

She had made it through her first year well enough. Then it became clear that it wasn’t well enough. 

Annabeth was a calculated girl. Smart and cynical. Brave and quick.

She lied about it when she went out. She found windows to slip into paradise while timing it perfectly to be there for Percy, knowing he would come by often. 

Because he was good. He was _so_ good. And the world wasn’t good to him.

During their third year, Percy started to worry about her. He started desperately waving away the fog between them, to try and see _what was really happening?_ He started to go up to her dorm room more, and she started to not be there

Not total ragers, not always. There was a certain group she frequented when she went out for a drink, compiled of her roommate and loads of others, always demigods though. Nothing like the frat parties that happened at the mortal colleges. No, these were filled with tears like jewels and champagne like liquid rose. The dorms were their own personal madhouses. They relished the way it tasted when sliding down your throat into the basin of your terrified body. Because they weren’t safe here, not even in New Rome. 

Not anywhere.

Not sober.

_"This dorm was once a madhouse"_

_I made a joke, "Well, it's made for me"_

Annabeth’s last Christmas to the Jackson apartment was off from the very start, from the very first creek of the front door’s hinges. There they stood. AnnabethandPercy. There wasn’t really a word to describe the look in Sally’s eyes when she looked at Annabeth, who’d convinced Percy to buy a bottle of something on the way. He was holding it. His mother looked at him, and then to her. Back at him again.

And then back to her.

Mothers do know best. 

And sometimes all too well.

_Dom Pérignon, you brought it_

_No crowd of friends applauded_

_Your hometown skeptics called it_

_Champagne problems_

Annabeth wipes her sweaty palms on her jeans, knees bouncing as the knot in her stomach pulls taut. 

Of course, the act slipped up at some point.

Of course, everyone started to wonder _when was the last you heard from Annabeth Chase?_

Of course, the answer was always so long ago. She never came home for the summertime anymore.

_How evergreen, our group of friends_

_Don't think we'll say that word again_

_And soon they'll have the nerve to deck the halls_

_That we once walked through_

Of course, the truth about the notorious, untouchable, perfect daughter had to come out.

Percy had sat there. At the foot of her bed. Waiting.

Even drowsy, she knew something was wrong. She knew she had stayed out too late, and that she was not bulletproof, not immune to the knife of escape, escape from _everything._ Even the boy she loved.

“I didn’t know we were studying tonight,” she had said when she saw him there. She tried to sit up straight next to him, but she was tired. She felt good, and she wanted to sleep. “It’s late.”

“Where were you?”

“Wait, why are you here then? You don’t… you don’t even have your textbooks with you.”

_“I had a nightmare,”_ he said, his voice cold, hard, and breakable. Poor Percy Jackson. What a beautiful, brilliant, broken boy.

“I’m sorry,” was all she could say. Poor, poor Percy Jackson.

They sat in silence. She saw a photo she had taped to the wall beside her bed; her, Percy, and Grover as they drove up to California. She wanted to beg the youth inside its frame to let her go back. She wanted to rip it down. She wanted to punish herself the way she had hurt him. She hurt him. Her Percy. How could she have done such a thing? Left him out here? For how long had he been here, driving himself insane with terrors?

_What if he had done something to himself? Something… bad?_ The thought had got her as sober as she could. 

She threw her arms around him.

He didn’t do it back and wanted that to be okay, for that to be enough.

Right there, could they have been enough? 

Sober, mortal, young, and enough? 

That was when they realized.

It could never be sober enough for either of them. Not in this life. All their life they’d known one another, they’d danced on the tightrope of mortal and immortal, a dark merry-go-round of a tango, millions of feet in the air. If they were to fall, would they shoot up to the heavens, or 

down

down

down

to a cold death?

It was the same for their minds. Their sober was not other people’s sober. Not even one another’s. They were never out of their minds, but they were never too settled either.

So they realized.

Annabeth told him she was out. Told him that she was away. Not why she was out, but why she was not here when he arrived, drenched in sweat, needing her to hold him and tell him everything was going to be alright. Telling him to stay. 

He told her what he thought. That she didn’t care. (Why? Because he was afraid and hurt and selfish and alone.) It wasn’t the exact reason, but it wasn’t wrong. She needed a getaway. A single glance at Percy and she was sober. It hurt, but it was survival for survival's sake, so what else was she to do but make sure her mind was miles and miles away? What else could she possibly say to convince him it was a lie?

_Love slipped beyond your reaches_

_And I couldn't give a reason_

_Champagne problems_

He left that night in a blur, stumbling, reduced to tears. He needed her. He couldn’t do it alone. Everywhere was nightmares. Earlier that night, as he waited for her to come home, Percy found himself wondering if Tartarus was any more his home than Camp Half-Blood, or his mom’s place, where he grew up. Where did he grow up? The most severe change was _there._ That moment that he’s played so many times over in his head it may as well be a century. That moment when he saw just how much misery Misery could take. How much _they_ could take.

“Not monsters, Percy,” she’d whispered to him, her breath warm against his cheeks. “Just trees.” They’d slept under the stars that last summer, seems now like forever ago, at Camp just so she could prove it to him. To the both of them, really.

“Just trees,” he said back to her.

The word _evergreen_ had taken on a whole new meaning. Just like everything else in the world, it was theirs. 

And when the trust broke, the forest itself started collapsing in, like dominos, one after one.

The forest became his worst nightmare.

Percy’s heart was glass. Annabeth dropped it.

What else could she possibly say?

She doesn’t want to look at him now. Unless that is, she’s watching him go, because she knows she’ll try and make him stay. She never was ready to lose him, never will be.

She knows she’ll try and make him stay.

She knows he won’t.

_One for the money, two for the show_

_I never was ready, so I watch you go_

Annabeth would do anything to gain back Percy’s everything that he had once given her. But she left him.

She left him.

_Because I dropped your hand while dancing_

_Left you out there standing_

_Crestfallen on the landing_

_Champagne problems_

She told him it for the last time that night. The purest truth she had. She told him that she loved him.

She did love him. She does love him.

That much will never be a lie.

_If only that were enough,_ Percy thinks. 

If only we were enough.

“But wasn’t it beautiful?” Annabeth can’t help but say out loud now, breaking the thick silence, a lump forming in her throat. “How for this long, we were absolutely everything? How often do you meet someone like that?”

The question lingers in the air. He doesn’t have an answer, so he says nothing.

_How often do you meet someone like that?_

Way less than two out of seven.

Way less than two out of seven million stars in the sky.

Way less than two out of six-hundred floors to the top of the world.

Way less than two hands intertwined.  
Way less than two brilliant minds.

Way less than two feet in the sand.

Way less than two kisses before bedtime.

Way less than two pairs of eyes, sea green, and striking gray.

Way less than two youths, standing on platform two, arriving back in Manhattan at 2 am in the morning.

He says nothing.

He says nothing, just runs his finger over the small gem in his pocket. They hadn’t needed it. They hadn’t needed anything but one another.

He says nothing, but he wants to say something. Something true, something beautiful. But he doesn’t need to say anything.

He says nothing.

_Yeah. We were everything._

_Your mom's ring in your pocket_

_Her picture in your wallet_

_You won't remember all my_

_Champagne problems_

The train comes and as it starts up, she tries not to run after it. _Don’t leave me, Percy,_ she doesn’t yell. _Please. I’m sorry. Don’t go._

_Don't leave me._

He does, just as she did to him.

He watches her heart fall out of her chest and shatter. Just like his.

Annabeth whispers to him as she watches him slip away, the sound of the train on the tracks forever engrained in her mind, along with his beautiful, beautiful face she would see in her dreams every day after that until she could dream no longer. 

She whispers to him a hope, a wish. One she knows, deep in her soul, as little as she’d like it to be, will come true. 

“You won’t remember all my champagne problems.”

But then again, she’s the only one on the platform now. 

So she says it to herself, 

turns to go, 

and as the years go by, 

she tries to forget

all her 

champagne problems.


End file.
